Chris Conte, designer on Satellite Reign, has been kind enough to allow us to ask him a few questions about the game and its Kickstarter.

On the Kickstarter page, it describes Satellite Reign as a strategy game. Would you consider Satellite Reign to be more strategic than Syndicate or Syndicate Wars? If so, how? Will Satellite Reign have a strategic layer to it, such as research in Syndicate?

Satellite Reign will have a lot more depth in all aspects of the game. Everything in the world will be simulated and intertwined. If you assassinate scientists and doctors of the opposing organisations you can cripple their weapon and augmentation output. Or, if you decided to bribe them instead of killing them you could get benefits on your own research and development. The player will be able to research weapons and augmentations, do deals on the black market, raise propaganda and steal money and gear. Satellite Reign will have a complex web of simulations that all feed into each other creating some very deep strategic options for the player.

Tacticular Cancer is proud to present our very first combined retrospection article and accompanying video retrospective. Sser braved the ardeous trip to his attic and gaming history to bring us his thoughts on the Close Combat series and its arguably best installment; A Bridge Too Far.

Perhaps the most stand-out feature of this game is its AI. Hannibal: Rome and Carthage in the Second Punic War features AI quite unlike anything I’ve seen in a turn-based strategy game. I’m not strictly talking about difficulty here, though the AI is astute and generally capable in exploiting player weaknesses. Each general possesses a different behaviour based upon that commander’s historic personality. For instance the aggressive Marcellus will instinctively try and take Hannibal head on in the field while the cautious Fabius, who earned the nickname ‘Delayer’ due to his initially unpopular strategy of avoiding direct battle with Hannibal, will be extremely reluctant to attack unless he possesses overwhelming force. Winning great victories with Hannibal also increases the AI’s caution over time who start the game reckless and overconfident but tend to become more cautious and cunning as the game progresses. This system grants generals a lot more personality than other games in the genre, where choices of officers usually only result in different statistical bonuses and zero change to behaviour, priorities and actual strategy. One learns to be wary of worthy foes such as Scipio Africanus while it is difficult to resist rubbing your hands together in delight when the incompetent Sempronius blindly leads a large force to its almost certain demise against you.​

A decent AI that actually displays character? Can't say I've seen anything like that in pretty much any recent strategy game. Go check out our indepth review to see if there's more the game succeeds at.

Ever wanted to design and run your own maximum security prison? Want to get in early on a developing game? Well, in Prison Architect, you sort of can:

You can buy Prison Architect on Steam right now for $30 USD. If you like, you can even pay a bit more and get the chance to name a prisoner and write his bio (IE: Put yourself, or someone you maybe don't like, into the game). You might want to think twice before you buy the game though because Prison Architect is a horribly buggy, incomplete prison building sim full of game breaking bugs, glitches and errors. But that's ok, it's supposed to be.
[...]
Your prisoners will try to fulfil their needs as they can, based on their daily regime and the facilities you have available. Finding our what specific needs are unmet for any prisoner is as easy as hovering over them with the mouse. Their list of current needs appears along with an indicator telling you how much they want something. These needs will change depending on what facilities you have available and how well your prison runs.
[...]
However, despite being an alpha, the game is kind of fun - if you're into those building management type things. The graphical style is also quite nice and suits the game well. Rather than going for a fully 3D and bloomed up the wazoo environment, the 2D works well. Characters are simple shapes with basic facial features and they go about their tasks with appropriate tools in hand. Plus it's kind of cute to see Guards beating prisoners into submission this way.​

With the recent announcement of AGEOD and Matrix Games entering a partnership also came the re-release of Rise of Prussia in a Gold version. Our very own Cenobyte went to see what the new Rise of Prussia Gold is all about.

The game has a quite sophisticated supply system and also a rudimentary economic system for unit recruitment and replacement, but the supply system works largely in the background and does not require much management by the player (on a sidenote, the importance of the supply system depends on the settings, in some higher difficulties it is more important to keep tabs on the supply situation and the location of supply depots). Diplomacy is only involved in a very abstract sense in that some neighboring nations, such as the Netherlands or the Ottoman Empire, might choose to intervene into the conflict if one faction grows too strong. Such an intervention seems to be extremely rare, however, and I've never seen it actually happen in a game.

The game is not only advanced by the campaigns between the two rivals. Instead, the course of the game is further shaped by events that unlock allied troops and represent the warfare in the colonies. Short flavor texts provide some information about these historical events and add to the immersion of the game. Some of these events also offer choices to the player, such as deciding whether to mobilize the forces of Bavaria in Bohemia, close to the Austrian front lines, or rather in Nuremberg at the camp of the Imperial army, which would please France. Most of these events are not random and will happen at their historical date. Random events include events providing additional officers, which is especially important for Austria with its rather weak starting commanders, and events affecting your troops in the field in some – usually negative – ways.​

We put new staff member Absalom in the shoes of a budding capitalist and let him loose to see what he would do. Turns out he went on a railroad building spree and forgot all about importing coal. Yes, indeed, it was about time we paid some attention to Paradox Interactive's industrialisation sim Victoria II. Especially now that it's all patched up and has recieved two mayor DLC expansions with A House Divided and Heart of Darkness. Check out his comprehensive review.

For in Victoria II the primary force is Industrialization. Railroads are needed to transport goods. Factories are needed to produce on a scale heretofore unknown to man. The people need to be educated in order to best use these new goods and to participate productively in government. Not only are the methods different, so are the means. While you can construct individual rail roads and factories, it is much better to foster Capitalists to develop the land themselves. You don't simply hire more clergy, you make it a focus of the nation to recruit more clergy from X province. Tabs portraying your Nation in diplomacy, trade, military, production, population and the various ways you manipulate the Nation are the primary means of interacting with the game. Thus, you control your nation, less a Absolute Monarch as in previous Paradox titles and more a national zeitgeist.​

Will Jagged Alliance: Flashback's difficulty progress steadily as the game continues? What difficulty options will there be in the game? Will Ironman mode make a return?

Ironman is a must.

The classic game theory is to use the magic number 3 in terms of number of difficulty. Easy, default, Ironman.

Difficulty HAS to ramp up as you move forward. The exact method to use will be part of detailed game design to look at. We have tried to use different options earlier in our previous games - from hardcoded spawn (a bitch to balance, but it gave an ultra tight experience) to a point based system similar to Warhammer 40k, where each unit and weapon has a value that the AI balances the enemy team upon.

Which to use for JA:F is to be playtested and decided later. Since we want to add multiple factions to the game, here is a place we cannot (only) use the JA2 system and need to tweak it to be enjoyable to play and still pose a challenge.

Hellraiser, Kalin, Fowyr, Telengard and BlackAdderBG. WhiskeyWolf gets a honorouble mention for despiting not being eligible due to being staff still producing a rather kewl map.

Those lucky five winners will each be getting a copy of Victoria II and A House Divided for Steam. They will be contacted shortly with details on how to download their game.

Thanks to everyone for participating and especially to Paradox Interactive for giving us five Victoria II and A House Divided copies to give away! Do check out the recently released Heart of Darkness expansion if you can't get enough Victoria II.

April 16th will see the release of Victoria II's Heart of Darkness expansion. With a little prodding we managed to lure game designer Chris King out of the jungle to talk a bit about fun minors, newspapers and colonisation. Not to mention international crisis growing way out of hand.

Will we get more diplomatic options such as for instance giving the possibility to a Great Power to force an uncivilized nation into opening up their markets?

No, I´m afraid not. The only diplomatic options we have are in the crisis system. Flashpoints are areas where nations own land that either another existing nation feels they have claims on, or where a conquered people want to rise up and rule themselves. Each Flashpoint has a certain Tension level which is affected by how unhappy the people living there are, random events, and a few other factors like the power level of the current owner. Existing non-Great Power nations can also use one of their National Focuses to raise Tensions in areas they have claims on. Once the Tension level gets high enough it triggers a Crisis between the nation that owns the area and the nation that wants it. Both sides need a Great Power to back their cause unless they are GPs themselves or else the Crisis fizzles out, but if both sides get support the Crisis begins.

In a crisis all Great powers on the same continent are invited to express interest or sit it out with a prestige cost. If they join they can then choose to support either side, and the original GP on each side can attempt to bribe the other powers into their camp by offering up War goals against the other camp. A Crisis has a Temperature bar that is constantly increasing, once it reaches 100 the crisis becomes a war, but before that point the leader of either camp can choose to give into the demands of the other to resolve the crisis peacefully. ​

Exciting. In addition to the launch of Heart of Darkness tomorrow will also be the last day of our Map Painting Contest. So if you want to nab a free copy of Victoria II and its first expansion A House Divided you'd better get to it!

Does the idea of running a Great Power in an era of monocles and top hats appeal to you? Of course it does. Well, Tacticular Cancer has five (yes, five!) copies of both Victoria II and its first expansion A House Divided to give away. Developed by Paradox Development Studio, Victoria II will soon release its second mayor expansion named Heart of Darkness. Here’s some more information on just what Victoria II is all about.

Victoria II is a grand strategy game played during the colonial era of the 19th century, where the player takes control of a country, guiding it through industrialisation, political reforms, military conquest, and colonization.
Experience an in-depth political simulation where every action you take will have various consequences all over the world. The population will react to your decisions based on their political awareness, social class, as well as their willingness to accept or revolt against their government.​

So, what are Paradox games all about? Exactly, they are all about painting the map into your own pretty colours. And, what do you need to do to get yourself a nice copy of Victoria II and its A House Divided expansions? Right again, you’ll need to astound us with your best map painting skills. Do something funky with photoshop, go all Jackson Pollock on a map, draw your dream empire on a napkin, conquer Poland and send us a postcard. Above all, astound us with your originality, creativity and skill. Failing that, make something nice.

We will give the five best* contributions a copy of both Victoria II and A House Divided which you can reclaim through porn deletion service Steam.

The competition will be starting today and ending on Tuesday 16th of April - so start now if you want a copy! All entries must have something vaguely to do with map painting. TCancer Staff are excluded from entering.

To submit your entries you can:

1. Upload to your favourite image hosting website and post it in a reply in the comments for this news item.
2. Telepathically submit your image to our Judges' minds.
3. Send trash an email at roy.tcancer at gmail .com (added some spaces to make things a tiny bit more interesting for those harvesting bots)​

When a developer starts a thread on our forum about them making a new turn-based fantasy strategy game called Worlds of Magic we tend to take note. Especially when their feature list and even artwork reminds a whole lot of that staple of the genre; Master of Magic. I spoke with Leszek Lisowski, founder of Wastelands Interactive and Aaron Etheridge, lead developer of Lucid Dreamers about the power of crowdfunding, gaming in general and their new project in particular.

Strategy and wargaming are rather niche genres, and yet there are quite a few studios active in it. Would you say there still is a sizeable audience for these kinds of games? How do you think the future for the genre is looking?

(Aaron) I honestly feel this is more of a Leszek question, but I will say this: I think there's plenty of room in the market, especially for a genuine successor to MoM's throne.

(Leszek) Do you remember golden times of strategy games in mid 90’s? A lot of great titles were created then like Panzer General, Master of Orion, of course Master of Magic and many, many more. Of course now, there are couple of shining stars like Civilization series, X-Com or Sim City but you are right, most of the games are pretty niche if you compare them to the sales level of Call of Duty or Battlefront. However I think there is a plenty of room for such games. If I remember correctly it has been lately announced that Endless Space has been sold in over 500 thousands units. Pretty good score like for niche game. I’m pretty sure there is a lot of space for fantasy strategy games. Only for this year two great continuations are announced - Age of Wonders III and the new Eador. I’m sure that Worlds of Magic will have a lot to offer not only for strategy games fans. If only the press could stop calling every game where you have to think a hardcore title.​

Our resident megalomaniac and Let's Play enthousiastic Cassidy sat down to write up a detailed analysis of all the ins and outs of Europa Universalis III's expansions and some of its most popular modifications. It took us some time to decypher his hushed mutterings but we're glad to be able to finally share his wisdom and insight into the fine art of mappainting. Come check out the full article of Cassidy's Europa Universalis III Retrospective: On the expansions and some of the modifications

Paradox Interactive is the studio that's been bringing us classics like the Europe Universalis, Crusader Kings and Hearts of Iron games. The last few years they went from simply making grognard wargaming and strategy titles to launch their own digital distribution platform and publishing a broad selection of other niche oriented gaming titles. All that was enough reason for us to try and get someone to talk about how the heck a small Swedish studio could grow into this behemoth and what the plans for the future are. Shams Jorjani, VP of Business Development made some room in his busy schedule of trying to take over the world to talk to us for a bit.

Paradox Interactive has been around since 1998, right? That’s quite a legacy for a developer. One that has also been more and more successful during these last years. Could you tell us a bit about where Paradox Interactive comes from and where it is heading?

Paradox started off as most developers do - a small team with a weird little game that few others understood. At that time, the company worked with other publishers for marketing/sales/distribution of our games. After a while we realized they weren't really "getting" our games and were pushing them in the same way they would other mainstream titles. So when we finally had a bit of money and could hire another team member the dev team screamed for a new AI programmer. Fredrik Wester, now our CEO, overruled them and hired a marketing person. The devs were naturally fuming and uttered what since has become historical words at Paradox: "who needs marketing - a good game sells itself".

Well, that day Paradox became a publisher and things have pointed upwards ever since. It turns out that understanding what makes a game different from the competition allowed Paradox to better market the games. As they grew as a publisher, they had to start small and publish other 3rd party games that also were "niche". All the games weren't good - but once in a while they made enough money to snowball into bigger and better projects. Thanks to a few runaway hits (and a few solid ones) Paradox today is in a position where we only do projects we really believe in - if it's something we'd enjoy ourselves as niche gamers we know that our crowd will probably like it as well. Going forwards Paradox will continue what we've done all these years - we'll make smart, different and challenging games that demand a lot from the gamers - who in turn demand a lot from the games.​

Roman legions, Carthagenian fleets and lots of angry Samnites all come together in Ageod's Alea Jacta Est's first stand-alone expansion Birth of Rome.Mraston donned his sandals to try it out for us.

Which brings me to Birth of Rome, the stand alone expansion to Alea Jacta Est. It very much feels like a digitized version of a massive board game covering the Romans bloody rise to power in Europe. The game's ancient world map is covered in symbols reminiscent of board game pieces. You pick up, drag and drop commanders and order pieces like you would when playing on a table (there's even a reference to chits in the game's manual). The game has a transparent rules crunch like a board game, wherein the game's inner workings are explained up front. Fortunately you don't need to do any of the math yourself. You also don't have the problem of someone bumping over a commander piece and not knowing if last turn their army was in Sicily or Northern Africa. You will still need to read the rule book though.​

Straight out of the trenches we send our very own Oscar to go and re-enact some good old fashioned Napoleonic warfare with Paradox's March of the Eagles. Did he enjoy it or found it to be as much fun as marching all the way back from Moscow to Paris?

The horrible, horrible ‘ping-pong’ warfare of earlier Paradox games has returned with a vengeance. This is when a defeated army endlessly retreats, with your army requiring an insane number of victories to actually destroy it. Recent Paradox games have addressed this problem by seeing armies that stand no chance against you in battle instantly annihilated when you win. But here it’s worse than ever with enemy armies managing to retreat through your armies into your own provinces even when core provinces owned by them are available. I’m no military genius but I imagine that when an army is defeated they don’t “retreat” deeper into enemy territory. This is exacerbated by the game registering provinces without fortresses as instantly captured when an enemy army arrives. While this realistically represents the rapid manoeuvre and speedy advances of the Napoleonic Wars combined with this ‘ping-ponging’ of defeated armies, warfare can quickly take a turn to the ridiculous. In my game as Prussia, the Russian invasion into the east felt more like un-coordinated bandits bouncing around the frontier (a small invading Russian army of a few thousand soldiers managed to retreat all the way to Berlin) than any serious military threat. The game left me feeling more like I was playing whack-a-mole via mouse click instead of organising a desperate defence against the vast Russian tide. While the AI was faring poorly against me in their war score, they were certainly winning the fight against my patience. Thankfully the developers have put fixing this on their to-do list, but as it stands combat is more about your capacity to endure tedium than your tactical prowess. The diplomatic AI seemed little better, with Britain forming and then dissolving its coalition against France every few months.​

Unity of Command was released way back in 2011 by small independent developer 2x2 Games. Since we're now well into 2013 we decided it was about time we gave some attention to it. Our very own Ulminati braved the endless Russian steppes to see what's what with Unity of Command.

One of the most striking things most my Grognard compatriots tended to remark upon when seeing this game are the graphics. Many appear to loathe them and immediately assume the game is a glorified web browser clickathon. I’ll admit I was initially discouraged from buying the game because of them, but they very quickly grew on me. The interface is easy to navigate and packs a lot of information onto your screen without ever getting so confusing you can’t tell what is going on. The prevalence of browns and greys also fits the dismal setting of the miserable eastern front and allows the slightly brighter colors of the informational icons to draw the eye without burning out your retinas. Looking at a unit icon will tell you what kind of unit it is, what its strength is, if it is out of supply, how much of its combat strength is suppressed, its experience level, its status, whether it can move and/or attack and what specialist equipment (if any) it has without so much as mousing over the bust. Clicking any unit will bring up a more detailed overlay on the right hand side, putting numbers to the icons. The clean graphics allow for a lot of information to be conveyed on the screen in an easily readable format.

Steel Panthers originally got released in 1995 and has since then recieved more sequels, expansions and even full overhaul mods than you can shake a stick at. Our very own Garfunkel dives into the melee to try and make sense of it all and bring us a retrospective of fan fav Camo Workshop's Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank.

For those who do not know, in any Steel Panthers game, you control infantry squads and individual vehicles and guns. You might only have a single company; whereas some battles you control an entire, reinforced battalion. Each unit has a plethora of statistics, including experience and morale and a named leader with four skills – yay, Steel Panthers is an RPG! Units and their leaders can be renamed. Units are moved on a hex-based map where each hex is roughly 50 meters. Terrain is, naturally, of supreme importance. Tanks can get stuck in streams or swamps while infantry in the open is machinegun fodder. Units can have up to four weapons – plus smoke ammo or dischargers, and those weapons can have up to four different types ammunition; HE, AP, HEAT and Sabot. Vehicles have three sorts of armour: regular steel, reactive armour and anti-HEAT armour. Winner is the one who, after a certain number of turns, controls more victory locations, though destroyed units give points as well. During a campaign, units and their leaders gain experience and can be upgraded with new kit. This is why you shouldn’t rename your units as there is no other way to track what gear they are actually using, in the upgrade screen between battles. In battle, units can be suppressed and require their leader to rally them. Retreating and routed units are out of control, fleeing towards home and easy targets. Tube artillery, mortars, rocket artillery can be both on-map and off-map and counter-battery fire is possible against both. In short, if it’s possible in actual combat, it’s most likely possible in Steel Panthers.

Did I mention the game is free? Read Garfunkel's Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank Retrospective here.

Commander: The Great War admirably succeeds in staying true to the nature of warfare in this era and being a fun, accessible game that keeps you on the edge of your seat cursing as your offensive peters out of steam and manpower shortages begin to cripple your industry. The hex-based map will feel instantly familiar to anyone who’s spent time with Panzer General (and really, who reading this hasn’t?). What stops this game from being just another Panzer General clone is its well-thought out research and economic components. The tech tree simulates the doctrinal and technological advances that over the course of the war sapped the seemingly insurmountable advantages of the entrenched defender. The game correctly debunks the misconception that the entirety of the First World War was static, with innovations such as the tank (a laughable failure at first but quickly to become the heavy cavalry of the modern battlefield), gas warfare, dedicated fighter and bomber aircraft, creeping barrage and infantry assault tactics opening up eventual effective offensive possibilities.

From the cold steppes of the East comes quite a surprise. Russian 2010 indie hit Eador: Genesis got itself an English translation by the folks from Snowbird Games and is finally available for the wider world on GOG.com. And I'm happy to say it's a winner.

By drawing comparisons to such classic games as Master of Magic, HoMM III and Age of Wonders it really sets itself up to be compared to the best in the genre. Eador: Genesis also includes a lot of mechanics that in one way or another remind of these classics. So, how does it fare when stacked up? Amazingly well in my opinion. The graphics have a nice artstyle to them but really are nothing truly special. The almost complete lack of animations could turn quite a few people off as well. For those that look past these low production values however there is a game underneath that seems to open up layer after layer of gameplay as you learn its intricacies. Basic gameplay isn't too hard to learn. You hire some troops and a hero, go conquer some provinces, build buildings and try to take over a shard. However within that framework you'll soon discover that you constantly learn new things. How to build up your heroes or finding out that inactivity will doom you as certainly as overexpanding does. Same as making the transition from smaller shards to bigger ones means you'll have to adept your entire strategy.

Knowing that the spice must flow and that fear is the little mind-killer are just a few of the things Ulminati has learned from playing the magnificent classical boardgame Dune. Seeing your best friends being backstabbing bastards is apparantly another one of those things. Check out our latest edition of Cardboard Mutilation.

This is the core of what makes Dune such a popular game more than 30 years down the line. The asymmetrical nature of the factions means that every player’s strategies depend on who they are playing as well as the respective strengths and alliances of the other factions. The political factions in Frank Herbert's masterpiece were all scheming bastards. If your friends are scheming bastards too, this game allows you to play out your Machiavellian power fantasies. While the game is light in rules and the mechanics dealt with fairly quickly, the game is rich in decision points, every one of which could potentially win or lose you the game depending on the scheming of your so-called "friends".